HOW TO REINFORCE

[GrannyCarol]

Also fast units are stealthy when they execute their entire movement with one click. That is, if a horseman is outside of a sentry net unviewed by the enemy, and there happens to a spot in the net that is just one square deep (so that two unsentried squares are one square apart), the horseman can move through that sentried tile without being noticed, so long as the two sqaure movement is executed with one click.

So, you are saying that, if I move a fast unit in one turn, it could be unnoticed by the sentries? I assume you set them to the "sentry" function to keep track of approaching players? Soooo much to learn, soooo little time.... I'll be playing the end of my first real MP game tonight, which was a very long one between three old friends and a few AI's. One friend fell early to the one I am trying to beat. Fortunately, I was no where near either of them in the opening part, or this game would have been very short.

To be perfectly honest, my friend, though fairly new at Civ3, is an expert military strategist and I am a housewife that likes to play games. He's smart, cunning and ruthless and did have a huge advantage over me until he forgot to move his navy before he nuked my city... hehe Taking out the carriers with his airforce on it really did slow him down a lot. Now we have to regroup and there are less than 60 turns left to the game. I'm trying to figure out a strategy that will overcome my total lameness at game play brilliantly and allow me to hold on til the end. My one hope is that I am hugely ahead in points - being a builder and culture kinda gal - I am slightly behind on tech, the AI's are pretty much out of it, except I got them both after my friend to slow him down (quite a bit in fact, or even nuking his fleet probably wouldn't have bothered him).

So, it's down to the two of us as roughly equal powers, I assume he's ahead militarily and will come after me again, even though he was telling me that he can't do that right now. It's not that he would lie... but he will certainly keep things to himself.

Yeah, I love this game!

Thanks for the help - there are just a lot of "how to's" that I haven't bothered to learn playing against AI's while I chat at night. Now, suddenly, I need to know the keyboard shortcuts, how to use them and the tricks that will help me to hold on til the bitter end.

[Don K Hotay]

Sounds like a very interesting game you're in Granny. Hopefully you won't find the quick ladder games too fast or unfavorably different....they very interesting too

[FunkyChicken]

I never new most of the little tips when i first joined the ladder and i had been playing civ for years its amazing what u can learn just by playing other people
Hopefully maybe ill see ya in a few games in the future.

[GrannyCarol]

Yeah, we are booking along - spent a few more hours at it tonight. It's down to a war of attrition - he has to take me out, I'm too many points ahead for him to win any other way and we have about 35 turns left. He's got a huge military power, I still have most of my large continent, a large island and many little ones - some only one square, so he'll have to build some marines and go dig me out... hehe

Mostly he's had to just nuke the bejebers out of my cities, then send in armies to take the poor ravaged things. I'm learning that a city doesn't much protect the units in it from nukes... Is there anything that DOES work against them for protection?

I finally turned off my tech and am just using the money to buy units to keep me alive as long as possible. I also went to war status and am building just fighting units. It's my only hope of survival... my friend is suddenly getting a drop in production, possibly because he is nuking so much?

It's been great so far, we've played about 40 hours in the last couple of weeks and as of turn 505 out of 540 the outcome is not sure.

Next time, I think I'll try Summeria... Germany was ok - I enjoy having the ability to build libraries and reseach cheap, and I love Panzers, but that fast building thing is cool. I've been playing a SP game with Summeria to get the hang of them.

And.. yah, sometime soon you'll probably see me in the regular ladders, or looking for epic games or even email games (that sounds like fun!). I did join up today!

[Gorilla]

A few quick questions from another MP / C3C newbie. I've read a lot of the articles and information I could find but I'm still unclear on:

1) What a "D-Move" is.

2) What pressing "J" does.

3) How to execute a stack attack?

4) If I attack a city or square with a stack and my stack defeats the unit(s), does the stack move into the square? If so, then how does the situation occur where their movement and attack isn't finished but a reinforcment is moved in? It seems to me that IF a stack would occupy a square after victory, then wouldn't they either move in or continue attacking until their attack was used up?

5) If there's a way to make a whole stack attack at once, is there a way to make a stack of workers all irrigate at once? It's a pain to give the same order to every separate unit.

6) Is there a fast way to load a boat. Older versions of Civ had the "Sentry" command which would let units on Sentry board a boat that was leaving. I don't see that any longer. Am I missing something or is there a different way now?

7) Last, I have C3C (not PTW), with that in mind, is there a place I can go to see what all the shotcut keys are as well as a description of what the different Preference (ctrl-P) settings do? Some people mentioned "Cancel Orders" or something like that earlier. It would be nice to have this explained somewhere so I don't have to pester people with questions.

Thanks for all the great information sharing!

[Don K Hotay]

Gorilla said:

A few quick questions from anotherMP / C3C newbie. I've read a lot of the articles and information I could find but I'm still unclear on:

1) What a "D-Move" is.

It's a Double Move. You wait till the very end of the turn to move your unit (or units) so that you can move again immediately the beginning of the next turn.

2) What pressing "J" does.

Pressing "J" moves all units on a tile as a stack (all units move together)

3) How to execute a stack attack?

Pressing "J" or "SHIFT-J". "SHIFT-J" moves units of the same type together in a stack. So, if you had 5 warriors and 6 horses on a tile, and you wanted to move just the warriors, you would click on a warrior and then press "SHIFT-J" to move all 5 warriors together in a stack, leaving the horsemen behind.

4) If I attack a city or square with a stack and my stack defeats the unit(s), does the stack move into the square? If so, then how does the situation occur where their movement and attack isn't finished but a reinforcment is moved in? It seems to me that IF a stack would occupy a square after victory, then wouldn't they either move in or continue attacking until their attack was used up?

In a perfect world, your stack would immediately move in to capture and occupy the city after killing all enemy units within that city. However in simultaneous multiplay, lag is often prevalent in games. Your attacking stack may have killed all units in the enemy city, but lag in combination with slick reinforcement skill will prevent an enemy stack from capturing a city, even after a clear military victory. I say clear, because when this bug or exploit or whatever you want to call it arises, it's usually the case that much of the attacking stack has lost it's ability to attack, without actually having attacked, due to the fact that those units that did attack achieved military victory.

5) How do I remove items from the production queue in a city? If for example my production queue has "Colloseum" as the third item to build, I can't change to that improvement sooner now while it's still in the queue. Ack! Is there way to clear or alter the queue?

Just click on whichever improvement you want to get rid of and press delete.

6) If there's a way to make a whole stack attack at once, is there a way to make a stack of workers all irrigate at once? It's a pain to give the same order to every separate unit.

We all share your pain...there's no way around it.

7) Is there a fast way to load a boat. Older versions of Civ had the "Sentry" command which would let units on Sentry board a boat that was leaving. I don't see that any longer. Am I missing something or is there a different way now?

Park your boat next to the stack of units you want to transport. Then click on the units, press "J", and move them all onto the boat....yes, they all move in at the same time .

8) Last, I have C3C (not PTW), with that in mind, is there a place I can go to see what all the shotcut keys are as well as a description of what the different Preference (ctrl-P) settings do? Some people mentioned "Cancel Orders" or something like that earlier. It would be nice to have this explained somewhere so I don't have to pester people with questions.

Shortcut commands can be found in the civolpedia or by just holding your cursor over a unit action button.

[Gorilla]

THANKS DonKHotay! ;D

That clears up quite a bit.

I figured out that sentry still exists. I'll have to put a unit on sentry in a city and then see if it leaves on a boat. That used to work too.

Thanks again.

[Srayman]

DonKHotay said:

In a perfect world, your stack would immediately move in to capture and occupy the city after killing all enemy units within that city. However in simultaneous multiplay, lag is often prevalent in games. Your attacking stack may have killed all units in the enemy city, but lag in combination with slick reinforcement skill will prevent an enemy stack from capturing a city, even after a clear military victory. I say clear, because when this bug or exploit or whatever you want to call it arises, it's usually the case that much of the attacking stack has lost it's ability to attack, without actually having attacked, due to the fact that those units that did attack achieved military victory.

Actually one thing i've noticed with c3c, not sure about PTW or even early patches of c3c, but when you use stack attack on a city, after the battle only 2 units move in. You must move the rest in manually. I have used this a couple times to quickly kill the person taking the city, or retake the city i lost it and the game was not elimination. However, if there is no bug then the enemy will still have some units that can attack if they did not all attack so its very possible to lose the city again. But the thing to know is that only 2 units move into the city when its taken.

[Gorilla]

So would using catapult / trebuchet stacks in conjuction with say a stack of swordmen be a bad idea since it would give your opponent time to reinforce?

Is it a good idea to have a minor second stack in order to launch a follow up attack in the case of a reinforcement mid-attack?

Also, what happens if Stack A attacks City B and Stack C attacks Stack A mid-attack? Can that happen?

And if I reinforce a city using auto-move, is there a way to Fortify more than one unit at a time or do I need to hit Fortify for each unit? I'm guessing I do.

[Don K Hotay]

Artillery units are good for offense when you are preparing a long seige and want to take down city walls or improvements (barracks/temple). You wouldn't usually use them when using doing a surprise attack, firstly because they don't move fast, and secondly because of what you mentioned...in the time it takes for you to bombard, your enemy will be able to move units around and thwart your attack better.

The most important thing to do when attacking is to take out roads leading into a city...dedicating units to this task is essential these days to take an enemy city. Stacks cannot attack each other during an attack. If Stack A is attacking Stack B, Stack C cannot attack Stack A until it has finished it's attack. And of course, if stack A is attacking Stack B, neither stack A nor B are allowed to use their units to attack, move, foritify, unfortify, or anything else.

To fortify all units, just right click on the stack and hit fortify all.

[Mo D]

Unfortunately, the value of using seige/bombard units in an offensive role is greatly diminished when playing timed games. There is no "bombard all" command, so each unit has to be fired individually. In fast-paced games with a timer, there's just not enough time for this.

It's unfortunate that our Ladder games have this fun and effective aspect of the game reduced to uselessness.

[CrudeDirk]

Well auto-bombard (shift-B) works for me. Although I've only ever used it defensively not offensively. It's great when 20 cats fire all at once at the start of the turn, huge boom, makes my cat jump everytime.

[donaldkipper]

hadnt thought about that - auto bombard and ctrl-u at start turn but still only useful in a siege style attack

[Mo D]

Yeah, that's fine if you're going to be bombarding the same square over and over again. Not very flexible though.

[Trip]

Auto-bombard is something I've wanted ever since vanilla.